The tools activist Lee Min-bok makes use of to ship balloons laden with anti-Kim Jong Un leaflets throughout the border from South Korea unto the North has been gathering mud and cobwebs for months.
When it turned clear that centre-left politician Lee Jae Myung was on monitor to win the June presidential election, Lee Min-bok was amongst a number of South Korea-based activists who stopped their missions, anticipating a crackdown by the brand new, pro-engagement administration.
Lee Jae Myung, a former human rights lawyer, is pushing to ease tensions with Pyongyang and final month stated activists needs to be “severely punished” in the event that they proceed the balloon operations that anger North Korea.
“I’ve been doing it quietly and what’s wrong with that? Provoking North Korea? No way,” 67-year-old Lee Min-bok instructed Reuters as he stood subsequent to a rusting truck geared up with a hydrogen tank for filling balloons.
“But realistically, look how serious it is right now. Police are out there and if I move, everything will be reported.”
For years, police have monitored Lee from the house subsequent door – one plainclothes officer instructed Reuters they’re there to guard him from potential North Korean threats – however as a substitute of checking climate studies for superb balloon launching situations, Lee now spends his days writing on-line posts criticising the South Korean authorities.
CALLS TO ACTIVISTS
The activists, lots of whom are North Korean defectors like Lee, are used to being on the centre of geopolitical tensions.
An try by a earlier liberal president to ban the balloon launches was struck down as unconstitutional. And final 12 months, North Korea started launching waves of its personal balloons into the South, some carrying rubbish and excrement.
Lee, who took workplace on June 4, has promised to enhance relations with the nuclear-armed North, saying tensions with Pyongyang have had an actual unfavorable financial impression. He has urged diplomacy and dialogue and his administration has additionally suspended anti-North Korea loudspeaker broadcasts alongside the border.
North Korean chief Kim Jong Un, nonetheless, final 12 months deserted a objective of unification with the South and has proven little openness to diplomacy.
After Lee ordered measures to cease leaflet launches, officers and police mentioned plans together with deploying police to frame areas to preempt launches, and punishing the activists by utilizing laws corresponding to aviation security legal guidelines, in keeping with the Unification Ministry that handles inter-Korea affairs.
Several teams within the South frequently ship balloons to the North carrying leaflets, bibles, meals, cash, and numerous media.
In the previous 12 months, police have investigated about 72 instances of anti-North leaflet actions and despatched 13 to prosecutors, one other police official stated. They are nonetheless wanting into 23 instances, the official added.
Police are additionally investigating six Americans who tried to ship round 1,300 plastic bottles crammed with rice, greenback notes and Bibles to North Korea.
“Fear is spreading. The mood is bloody intense,” stated one other North Korean defector-turned-activist who had secretly flown balloons a couple of times a month for greater than a decade.
The activist stated he had paused the launches this spring when polls confirmed Lee was prone to win the election.
“I get calls from the government recently that apparently want to check in, to see whether I am going to send the balloons or not,” stated the Seoul-based activist, who declined to be named for concern of reprisals.
Choi Sung-yong, chief of the Abductees’ Family Union who works to carry dwelling South Koreans kidnapped by North Korea, stated his group had determined to droop the balloon launches after receiving calls from new authorities officers.
Chung Dong-young, the Unification Minister nominee, stated final month he rang Choi and thanked him for reconsidering the balloon launches which Chung described “a catalyst to confrontation and hostilities” between the 2 Koreas.
‘RIGHT BALANCE’
North Korean officers have labeled leaflet activists in South Korea “human scum” and in 2020 demolished an inter-Korean liaison workplace throughout a spat over leaflets. In 2022, they claimed the balloons might carry the coronavirus.
The Lee administration’s strikes have been welcomed by some residents who’ve stated the launches put them in danger.
“I feel much more comfortable and hopeful… People couldn’t sleep,” stated Park Hae-yeon, 65, a farmer in Paju whose household runs a restaurant close to the border. “Now I am hearing leaflets not being distributed, I see a sign of hope.”
James Heenan, who represents the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights in Seoul, instructed Reuters that leaflet operations are a matter of free expression that must be balanced with respectable nationwide safety issues.
“We hope the right balance will be struck,” he stated, noting that earlier punishments had been overly harsh.
Source: www.anews.com.tr